China’s ZTE aims to almost double U.S. smartphone share

By Yimou Lee HONG KONG (Reuters) – China's ZTE Corp, the world's seventh-biggest smartphone maker, aims to almost double its U.S. market share in the next three years by ramping up spending on marketing. ZTE, which trails cross-town peer Huawei Technologies Co Ltd in selling both smartphones and telecoms equipment, wants more share of the fat profit margins promised by sales of high-end phones in the United States. ZTE targets a U.S. market share of 10 percent by 2017 from 6 percent in 2013, Lv Qianhao, global marketing director of mobile devices, told Reuters at a company event on Thursday. That would place it a distant third behind Apple Inc with 41 percent and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd with 26 percent, according to September-November data from researcher comScore.